Photos of the Finished Piece

I mentioned awhile back that my camera/computer connection and I were having an argument.
I solved it by switching the connection cable from a USB hub to a USB port at the back of my computer (hint – removable hard drives don’t seem to like USB hubs either.)
I am finally able to show pictures of the finished RosesnPansies Silk Ribbon piece that I made for my friend Sally that have been sitting on my camera for the last couple of months. I’ve been scanning the pieces from my latest Butterfly project, tho I knew that I’d need to be able to use a camera for it pretty soon.
Sally has long since received it, and says that she loves it. I’m very glad because I tried hard to make it in her tastes.
The last time you saw it, I’d laced the piece onto padded stiff cardboard.
When Rachel of VirtuoSew Adventures visited me at Christmas, we talked about how we both thought the piece needed more space around it. The flowers filled up so much of the piece, not leaving a lot of ‘air’ around it. It felt crowded.
So, (mourning the effort I’d already made in lacing it onto board), I laced a bigger board with another, darker purple fabric. No padding this time.
I glued the piece on top of this, using Helmark 450 Quick Dry Adhesive (an Australian product from an art supplies shop).
This worked very well. I had thought that trying to blind stitch the very edge of the padded board onto the unpadded background board would be difficult, if not impossible to do well, so I went for the glue.

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I then glued on some braid onto the edges of the back board (hey, I was onto a good thing with this glue, tho it felt a bit weird to glue something, not sew it on).
The braid is composed of three thick pieces of lovely shiny copper satin ribbon, braided together.

I got this from the unlikely sounding on-line and store frontage shop called “Darn Cheap Fabrics”. http://www.darncheapfabrics.com.au/
I would have liked enough braid to go around all 4 edges of the piece, but sadly, I miscalculated and wasn’t prepared to wait for more to come through the postage by that stage.
For other Australians, that store has a few nice trimmings there that might be worth checking out.
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So the piece could be hung easily, I used Ruth O’Leary’s clear directions from her blog entry
http://rutholearytextileart.blogspot.com/2010/08/spirograph-panels-backing-and-hanging.html
I added on little pockets at the top of the back of the board. This meant that Sally could hang the piece simply with a piece of dowel/wood/whatever through the pockets, attach a string to each end, and hang the string from a picture hook. She’s framed pieces I’ve done for her in the past, and this time, I wanted to save her the cost.

You can see the ends of the braid at each end. I couldn’t finish it any more neatly, short of putting a little cover of purple material on top. I wasn’t too worried, since it was the back.
The braid wanted to unravel very badly, so I glued the ends and added a few stitches for security, then glued down the whole braid. The braid was flat, not round, so it was easy to glue down. A round braid, glued – ugh!
So – there you go. My first big ribbon embroidery project. I’ve still got some daisies and a sunflower to do, for two other thankyou presents for friends.
Silk ribbon embroidery isn’t hugely my thing, although I do like playing with the lovely coloured silk ribbons, especially the variegated and wired ones. The technique is a bit “Great-Aunty” for me. But it does have the advantage of being quick. Or at least, a lot quicker than stumpwork/goldwork/16th/17thC embroidery.

Front Wing 98% Finished

I’ve run out of the Kreinik Blending Filament I was using between the different shades of DMC, so some not yet outlined.
Don’t the wing pads look 100% better with the couched outline? Rachel Wright of Virtuosew Adventures visited me around Christmas and identified the the thread as an unusual knitted thread. It looks like that ‘pipe’ of ‘crochet’ you make with nails and a cotton reel, only with a cotton core.
It’s slightly off-gold, to go with the copper Kreinik. (Poor Jerry Kreinik, head of the company, passed away recently, if you hadn’t heard.)
I didn’t dare plunge the ends of the thread. A thick thread (thicker than any metal thread I’ve used) plunged at the edges of fraying material that I’d had to oversew several times?
Call me a coward, but I just didn’t want to make large holes on those edges. So I matched the ends of the thread up as well as I could on the top of the fabric and it looks fine, unless you have your nose to the exact spots. Not as neat as plunging, but I thought it the best choice in the circumstances.
There are also a couple of different sized sequins yet to be attached.
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The selection of silk dupion pieces to select from for the final ground has arrived and is waiting for me at the post office. I’ll be able to get it on Friday!
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I’ve started the smaller back wing.
This will eventually have some technical ‘tricks’ added to it, but the first step is to create and add the wingpads, then fill in the outline with 3 colours of reddish-copper, same as the big wing.

It’s a bit hard to interpret which shade goes where, unless you have the original illustration in front of you. And I changed it a bit.

You can see the darkest colour right around the edges of the back wing, then the intermediate colour around the wing pads and extending down the back tip. The lightest colour surrounds the wingpads.
My photo shows the lower outer edge mostly done. As with the big front wing, I couldn’t always include all 3 shades where they are shown in the illustration, because there simply wasn’t room – hence my ‘re-design’.
I transferred the outline of the small back wing to some miscellaneous purple fabric using my trusty Clover Charocopy chalk transfer paper.
I then went over the outline in stem stitch. The chalk will rub off over time.
I then created two more wingpads on a seperate hoop, using the purple shot with red dupion. *This* time I used FrayCheck to outline the edges of the wingpads before cutting them, and it was far far easier to sew them onto the wing outline without the edges of the wingpad dupion fraying.
Once the wingpads were down, I used a micro pen to mark in the borders of the 3 colours. I had trouble getting the front tip in a nice rounded shape, as you can see by the multiple re-drawings at that point.
This shouldn’t take long …. then onto some exciting stuff!